Laptop Graphic Card

[MoLt3h]

I'm completely new to the whole laptop scene but am looking at getting one which I can use for uni work and also be able to run games up to the standard of World of Warcraft/Rome: Total War on...

I have a budget of £500 so Dell laptops are looking very viable...

However, is "Intel GMA 900 Media shared graphics memory upto 128MB" any good for running games?

to quote a OCUK product I get :

Dell Inspiron 6000 Celeron M 360 - XP Home (N02601) (LT-013-DE)
Celeron M 360 1.40Ghz
- 1MB L2 Cache
- 15.4" WXGA Widescreen Panel (1280x800)
- 512MB DDR2 Memory (2x256MB)
- Intel GMA 900 Media shared graphics memory upto 128MB
- 40GB 5400rpm IDE Hard Drive
- Internal Combo 24x CDRW / 8x DVD-ROM
- Internal 56k V.92 Modem
- Intel ProWireless 2200 802.11b/g Mini PC Wireless LAN
- Microsoft WIndows XP Home SP2 Edition Installed and supplied
- PC Restore system supplied free by Symantec
- Microsoft Works 7.0

If I were to buy this laptop is the graphics card viable to run my afore mentioned games?

Also would I be able to upgrade the graphics card if I were to get more funds available at a later date. (£500 is max I can go to get the actual laptop though since it is being bought for me due to my old one being stolen and hence being replaced for the same price.)

(And yes I noticed the one I quoted is more than £500 but I generally wanted the system type and spec to be similar to what I aim to get)


...If this is the wrong place I apologise!

Thanks in advance

 

[FirebarUK]

You'll need more CPU behind you with that graphics card to run WoW.

My desktop machine at work (P4 2.8Ghz, 1GB RAM), barely runs WoW on low details, it averages around 21FPS. It uses the Intel Accelerator 900 like that laptop.

 

[MoLt3h]

Ok then...so what sort of laptop graphics card should I be looking for with around that power?

Lets assume RAM is 1gig (cos i've spalshed out and upgraded that)

and the processor can be AMD Sempron 3000+, 1.8GHz CPU

 

[FirebarUK]

A 9600 based solution, or 9700/9800. A X300 might do the job.

Edit - try to pick up a Pentium M if you can, 1.7Ghz or so. Perhaps even an AMD Turion based jobby :S

 

[smids]

The Celeron M is probably more powerful than a Sempron. It is basically a Dothan with half the cache cut i.e. basically a Banias core. Dothan's are amazing CPU's and just half the cache will not slow that down.

In terms of graphics power, Firebar is right, you won't play any decent games on that. Intel GM accelerators use system RAM, reducing system RAM bandwidth and RAM total. You'll need something along the lines of a 6800 or better (might get away with a 6600), X700/X800 (might get away with X600) with dedicated RAM.

Low budget would be the 9800/9700 (don't go nV at this low price point).

For £500 you will be very limited though.

 

[Eliot]

this is high jacking a thread here but how does a 7800 go compare with its pc counterpart.

 

[MoLt3h]

Thanks for answers so far has been helpful, if not desparing in my search!

I presuming that ATI Radeon Xpress 200M - up to 128MB is pretty much the same as the Intel GMA 900 Media shared graphics memory upto 128MB...

But this one does have a celeron m processer at 1.4ghz

 

[FirebarUK]

The ATI will be a little bit better. To be honest you'll be running it on lowest details (800x600).

 

[tbz_ck]

If you can stretch to about £650 take a look at the Acer 5024WLMi.

X700 graphics and a Turion ML34 @ 1.8Ghz which should do WOW fine.

Worked on 2 of these now and they are nice machines......

Google is your friend.